


Halcyon Days

by aerynevenstar



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Drabble, Gen, Reincarnation, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-22
Updated: 2017-05-22
Packaged: 2018-11-03 01:39:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10957017
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aerynevenstar/pseuds/aerynevenstar
Summary: His nights are death. Blood and severed limbs and giant teeth gnawing on shrieking, gurgling human bodies.(He doesn't go a single night without screaming.)His days are a lie. He has a bookshelf overflowing with sketchbooks that are filled with the faces of people who don't exist; diagrams of 3D-maneuver gear and harnesses and the wings of freedom and shaking fists clenched over trembling hearts.(What is real?)





	Halcyon Days

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a combination of SnK reincarnation fics and a Bleach fic I read years ago where Ichigo never regained his powers and spent the remainder of his human life as a famous author who wrote about his Shinigami days, pretending it was fiction. (Sorry, I can't find it on FFN anymore!)

Ryōshi Akio is 10 years old when he has his first night terror.

His parents startle awake to the sound of his agonized screaming and stumble into his bedroom, certain that their son is being murdered in the middle of the night. He is awake but mentally unaware of their presence, his unseeing eyes occupied with horrific images of a past long forgotten by any historian. Their voices do not reach him until he finally collapses into their arms an hour later, shaking apart with the knowledge that his home has been destroyed, his mother _(-but that's not really his mother, what is **happening** -)_ was _eaten alive_ in front of his eyes, and humanity is on the brink of extinction.

It takes his parents another two hours to convince him that what he saw wasn't real.

 

* * *

 

Three years later, the dreams start again.

His nights are filled with faces of people he has never met before in his life. He learns their names and their personalities, their existence becoming more real to him than even his own. His waking moments begin to seem more like a dream than his nights, and his parents ( _-but are they really his parents? Is Akio even his real name?-)_ are so worried they can hardly speak to him without crying or yelling anymore.

(It doesn't matter, they're not real.)

He spends his days floating through school, barely paying attention long enough to scrape by a passing grade. His teachers stare at him with concern and whisper to each other when they think he can't hear; his friends deserted him long ago, too weirded out by his sudden drastic change to stick around for more than a few months. He gets called into the school counselor's office at least once every two weeks, frustrating the concerned woman over and over when he insists that _yes_ he is fine, _no_ his parents do not hit him, _no_ he doesn't need anyone to visit his house and check on him, thank you.

No one dares to look at what he sketches during their breaks anymore. The rumors of human beings eaten by giants in horrifyingly gruesome detail on every page are enough to stop even the morbidly curious.

 

* * *

 

When he turns 15 and shrieks awake at two in the morning, babbling about a giant so tall it blocks out the sun and a day of tragedy where nearly everyone he knows (in the dream world?) is dead, his parents sign him up for therapy twice a week.

It doesn't help.

 

* * *

 

His nights are death. Blood and severed limbs and giant teeth gnawing on shrieking, gurgling human bodies.

(He doesn't go a single night without screaming.)

His days are a lie. He has a bookshelf overflowing with sketchbooks that are filled with the faces of people who don't exist; diagrams of 3D-maneuver gear and harnesses and the wings of freedom and shaking fists clenched over trembling hearts.

(What is real?)

 

* * *

 

When he turns 18, he moves in to an apartment on his own.

No one here minds his silence or the way he keeps to himself. He gets a job cleaning hotel rooms and tries not to wonder if the short, OCD man he dreams of would approve.

His apartment is on the top floor. Being able to glance out the window of his bedroom at night and see an open sky with no giant walls blocking out the distant sight of a glimmering ocean grounds him, reminds him where and when he is. Reminds him that he is no longer trapped.

(Why doesn't he feel free?)

He continues going to therapy, but switches therapists; it's a new city, far enough removed from his hometown that the drive would be too long to make every few days.

The new therapist is quiet for a long time after he tells her about his dreams and the waking flashbacks to a time that doesn't exist in any history book. When she breaks the silence again, it is to say only one thing before the end of their session.

She asks him to write it all down.

 

* * *

 

He is 21 when he submits the draft of his first novel to a successful publishing company. The pages are accented with his own sketches of Titans, humans soaring through the air with the wings of freedom flying behind their backs, and more death than anyone in any lifetime could be expected to endure with any tattered remnant of sanity.

 _Shingeki no Kyojin: The Fall of Wall Maria_  goes viral within the year.

5 months later, he has companies all over the world begging him for the rights to turn it into an anime, a comic book, a live-action movie, everything. It gets translated into 17 different languages. His editor is thrilled beyond words, demanding a sequel as fast as he can type it. The man actually _cries_ when he presents him with ten notebooks filled with the memories of what happened later: the destruction of a second wall, the manifestation of humanity's rage, the soldiers who gave their lives to seize humanity's first victory, human traitors with the power to shift into Titans themselves, the discovery of other survivors, the end of the war.

It is a strange feeling, to have people suddenly be so happy with him and the images he produces from his mind. The last decade has been filled with nights spent screaming and days spent hearing that he is crazy, that the dreams are not real and he needs to stop focusing on them.

His book is published under the pseudonym "HUNTER" but it never seems to deter reporters from begging for an interview or a photo of the author. His editor never actually says it out loud, but Akio knows the man wants him to go public with his identity. The novel is an international sensation, transcending the language barrier and reaching far across the ocean to become a popular household topic. He releases three more novels in the series, focusing on everything that he can remember from his dreams and some things that he can only guess at.

He has only ever seen this world through the eyes of one person, after all.

 

* * *

 

When there is only one book left before the end of the story he knows more intimately than his own life experiences in the world he actually lives in, he finally acquiesces to his editor and publishing company's requests to attend an event and suffer through his first public interview. People from all over the world go wild with joy at finally seeing the man behind the series and all airlines and hotels are booked solid within a week of the news.

They fly him out to Tokyo for Comiket, and he spends a single sleepless night before the convention staring out of his hotel room window at walls and buildings that block out the sky.

He wastes away the hours imagining how easy it would be to swing between the buildings with 3DM gear, trying to ignore the fluttering panic building within his ribcage. He has spent over half of his life trying to suppress these images and dreams, and now he is going to be stared at by countless people as reporters ask where he got his ideas from.

When the morning comes, he decides to slip into the con as one among a faceless multitude - no one will recognize him on sight, so it's not like he will be mobbed by fans or anything. He can whittle away the time before his scheduled panel just watching the crowd of cosplayers and excited teenagers.

This idea dies a violent, obscene death the minute he sets foot on the property and is greeted by hundreds of people dressed in the uniforms of the military police, the Scouting Legion, and even a few enterpising individuals with bodysuits and painted serial-killer grins on their faces, pretending to be Titans. His heart pounds violently against his breastbone as he stumbles away to the VIP entrance, breath catching in his lungs as his eyes fill with tears. Reality is colliding with his dream-world and it is too much, too vivid, too soon.

How is he going to survive this hell for two hours?

Convention coordinators lead him to a small room to await the prompt for his panel appearance. He downs three cups of tea in hopes of calming his nerves, and huddles in his chair, staring at his own hands clasped atop his knees. The other members of the panel attempt to make conversation with him a few times before giving up at the nauseated look of panic on his face.

15 minutes before he is supposed to go inside the room, he finally gets fed up with his own spiraling thoughts and sharply bites into the meaty edge of his palm. The action is more familiar to him than breathing and offers clarity to the fog in his mind like a shot of pure adrenaline. He breathes deeply and presses the pad of his thumb into the purple indents of his teeth, massaging the pain into his skin every time his thoughts begin to drift.

 _It's okay_ , he tells himself. _If you can face down a 100-meter Titan in your dreams and not even flinch, you can handle a few hundred humans dressed in fake uniforms saluting you with fists on the wrong part of their chest._

The thought grounds and focuses him, just in time for one of the coordinators to summon him to the panel table.

He approaches his designated seat with a swift bow towards the crowd, nearly every member of the horde screaming, whistling, and clapping at his entrance as though he were truly the incarnation of a hero that fought for humanity's survival. His brown hair falls sloppily over his eyes, shielding his downturned face from the stares as he takes his seat and offers a quiet "thank you" into the microphone set up behind a large nametag emblazoned with a simple "HUNTER" in large block letters.

The crowd slowly quiets down, waiting with bated breath to hear whatever he has to say. The leading spokesman for the panel begins chattering away, introducing him as if the attendees don't already know that he is the author behind the successful, gruesome tale of children who had to grow up way too fast in a world ready to rip them apart at the first opportunity.

He silently raises his head to glance over the sea of eyes staring avidly at him, casting his eyes over unfamiliar faces pretending to be the people he sees in his waking dreams, and then-

...and then two (alarmingly) familiar people stand slowly, deliberately, from the crowd of seated attendees.

Twin resolved, fierce gazes meet and capture his eyes. Their right hands clench into tight fists and smack into the center of their chests, left arms held stiffly behind their backs as their feet shift apart and their shoulders settle into a confident, familiar stance.

A red scarf flutters once with the motion, and then stills.

Mikasa Ackerman and Armin Arlert stare up at him in a deliberate challenge, their salutes unwavering and horrifically accurate in a way he has only seen in the middle of the night amidst screaming horrors and ground-shakingly loud roars.

The sight of them wavers and blurs as his eyes fill immediately with tears. He bites sharply into his trembling bottom lip, clawing inwardly for the slightest shred of composure as his frantic mind spirals into thoughts of _oh god, not now, not now, please **please** don't let me have an episode in the middle of all these_ -

Suddenly, more people scrape their chairs sharply on the floor as they stand, shifting their bodies into a practiced salute that no one alive should know how to perform so accurately. Thirty people are now standing from the crowd, most of them clustered directly in front of his chair, immediately within his line of sight.

He recognizes every single face.

"S-sir....are you alright?"

The words register dimly from beside him, a hand held out cautiously and ready to catch him if he falls out of his chair. He is shaking, his whole body trembling violently as hot liquid slices down his cheekbones more painfully than any blade. Faintly, the shuddering gasps of desperate breath filter through his ears, the sound of a person hyperventilating in panic. (It is a familiar melody for nights tangled in sweat-soaked sheets, with mangled screams caught in his throat like a prayer.)

Instead of retching or passing out on the floor like his body so desperately wants to, he forces himself to unsteady feet and returns the flawless salute to the members of the 104th Training Corps and the Scouting Legion that stare back at him with eyes haunted by the same things he has seen in his sleep for the last decade.

They are real, he realizes finally.

The years of dreams and waking nightmares were never delusions of his fractured mind, as he has been told for far too long; rather, they are memories. Memories of a boy who lived eons ago and suffered through countless tragedies and moments of terror, who fought for humanity in the body of a Titan and uncovered the truths and mysteries of a world long forgotten.

And from the tears glistening in the eyes staring back at him, he realizes that he is, for the first time, not alone. There are others out there who understand him in a way no one else can; people who remember the exact sound and smell of a human being split apart by impossibly large teeth, who remember the feel of sling-shotting through the air with nothing more than cables, belts, and their own skill keeping them from crashing into the ground, who remember standing firm against creatures larger than anything alive had any right to be with twin blades and the snap of a green cloak.

He doesn't hear the horrified gasp of the crowd as he falters and crumbles to the floor, struck down by the sobs that claw up out of his chest and scrape their way out of his lungs in a throaty wail. Before any of the coordinators of the panel can do more than blink and call his (fake) name in horror, Mikasa and Armin are there at his side, enveloping him in their arms as they join him on the floor in a tangled pile, crooning "Eren, Eren, _Eren_ " into his ear in between shared sobs and hiccuping, broken laughter.

Security personnel falter at the edge of the stage, unsure whether they should act at all since he appears to be frantically pulling the two assailants closer instead of trying to escape. In the crowd, those who had been saluting in unified accuracy are collapsing into hugs and clamboring over occupied chairs to join the tears and joyful cries of recognition.

Later, reporters and convention attendees will fumble to make sense of what happened at the panel, inventing wild theories of reunited lovers or friends, family separated at birth, or maybe even long-lost comrades who served with him in the military when he was younger. No one comes even slightly close to the truth - that they are, somehow (impossibly), the conscious incarnations of the characters he writes about in his books, finally reunited long after the end of the war they all fought so desperately to survive.

* * *

 

His name is Eren Yeager, and he is finally home.

**Author's Note:**

> "Ryōshi" means "hunter" and "Akio" means "glorious hero" - I felt this was a fitting name for Eren.
> 
> I may write a part 2 for this, showing their actual reunions. Not sure yet, though I do have some ideas for more already.
> 
>  
> 
> ~~ah fuck it i probably will~~


End file.
